Lecturers:

Dr. David Etlin  (The University of Groningen)

Dr. Kohei Kishida (University of Amsterdam)

Date: 2012/12/03 (Mon) 15:00 – 18:00

Location: Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University

http://www.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/access/campus/map6r_y.htm

( Building No. 8 )

Titles:

Vague Desire: the Sorites and the Money Pump (David Etlin)

Topological Semantics for the Logic of Verifiability and Falsifiability (Kohei Kishida)

This talk introduces the notion of observability into the setting of

neighborhood semantics for modal logic, so that the box and diamond

operators signify the verifiability and falsifiability of propositions.

We also lay out a set of assumptions on observability from which we can

“deduce” topological semantics. This result provides a semantic

justification for system S4 of epistemic logic (as oppsed to the

conventional, axiomatic justification that the so-called positive

introspection axiom is an intuitively plausible principle of knowledge).

More importantly, the resulting interpretation of topology agrees with

ones found in computer science, and most notably in formal learning

theory (e.g., Kevin Kelly, The Logic of Reliable Inquiry (1996); another

notable one is in point-free topology, e.g., Steven Vickers, Topology

via Logic (1989)). Hence our topological semantics and epistemic

interpretation can provide a basis for modal logic of other notions in

learning theory (whereas Kripke semantics cannot, since it cannot

properly accommodate the notion of observability).